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EMV and mobile POS systems to collide

Two of the hottest trends in the payment landscape are mobile devices and EMV chip-cards. The latter is a security feature that has an industry-wide deadline for adoption of October 1, 2015, and the former is a new way to look at POS hardware. While both have companies updating payment systems, they are few options on the market that handles both of them.

However, it now seems as if that could be changing. According to a recent article from Payment Source, Square has announced that it is creating a version of its mobile card reader that will be able to handle EMV-chips.

Square is one of the leaders of the mobile POS marketplace. With just a small piece of plastic plugged into the headphone jack and a mobile application, any smartphone or tablet is now capable of accepting credit card payments. It is a popular solution with smaller businesses that are able to find a cheap way to deploy these systems.

In a blog post, the company discussed EMV and why it is important to start thinking about adopting the technology.

"Based on chip card rollouts in other countries, we estimate it'll take roughly three to five years for mass adoption. (Old habits die hard)," the post reads. "But getting an EMV-enabled device is a good thing to start considering. The sooner you're set up, the sooner your business will be better protected."

This is sure to be just the first of many mobile POS options with EMV capabilities to hit the market going forward. Companies should start familiarizing themselves with the options as soon as possible, though an investment will not be needed right away.